VC Tuesday: Super Darius finds Fun! in The Lost Stars

To NES-only kids, Sega's Alex Kidd games must have seemed like a really weird choice for Sega's flagship series: some rambling platformers with a not-so-appealing main character, completely different settings each time, and rock-scissors-paper for some reason. To people who grew up with Master Systems at home, however, they were ... still really weird. The Lost Stars is the most Mario-like of the bunch, with simple running and jumping in place of Miracle World's block-breaking and janken, but it is really, really freaky. Like "nude, mohawked enemies who shake their butts at you, somehow resulting in skull projectiles" freaky.

Super Darius 2 lacks rump shaking, but manages to be a good shooter regardless. Both games are out in Japan on the Virtual Console today.